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Canada's Top Ten Mountain Courses

Set in the shadows of mighty peaks throughout Alberta and British Columbia, the courses of the rockies are among the best in the world

By Brian KendallSpecial to The Star

Thu., April 11, 2013

Canada’s western mountain courses are a vital part of our golfing heritage, thanks largely to the genius of Stanley Thompson. Canada’s most revered golf architect, Thompson was born in Toronto but made his reputation in the 1920s with the opening of his now world-famous courses in Jasper and Banff. Both were stunningly innovative designs that established a template for Canada’s mountain courses followed to this day.

With a sculptor’s eye, Thompson cleared gaps through the virgin forest to point golfers toward greens aligned with distant mountains, then whimsically patterned his bunkers after the snow formations on their peaks.

Wherever the landscape permitted, Thompson preferred par-3s with elevated tees to enable golfers to better admire the rugged northern scenery. And in a major philosophical break from the “penal” tradition of North American course design, which demanded the golfer hit the shot dictated by the architect or find himself sorely punished, he always offered players a safer — albeit usually longer — alternative route to the green.

Both Jasper and Banff have been admired, envied and imitated by golf architects around the world ever since.

“We’re all awestruck pilgrims when it comes to Stanley Thompson’s mountain designs,” says Toronto-based architect Doug Carrick, himself the builder of two acclaimed British Columbia mountain courses, Greywolf and The Ridge. “Thompson possessed an almost supernatural knack for making each hole, one through 18, live in the golfer’s memory.”

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Banff Springs Golf Course Banff, Alberta

A bucket-list destination of golfers around the world, the Banff Springs Golf Course and the 125-year-old Fairmont hotel that looms like a fortress on the cliffs overhead have come to symbolize Canada as surely as the beaver and Niagara Falls.

Stanley Thompson’s course, opened in 1929 and the first anywhere to cost more than $1 million, is renowned as the home of the Devil’s Cauldron, one of the game’s most photographed par-3s. From an elevated tee isolated amid the boreal hush of the forest, golfers hit their shot over an impossibly picturesque glacial lake to a small sloping and heavily bunkered green set in the shadow of looming Mount Rundle.

Robert Trent Jones called Kananaskis Country Golf Course the best natural site he had ever worked with, high praise from a legendary American golf architect who started out as Stanley Thompson’s junior partner in the 1930s.

Set on the eastern slopes of the Rockies about an hour west of Calgary, Jones’s two brilliant 18-hole layouts — named Mount Lorette and Mount Kidd after the nearby peaks that soar 9,843 feet above sea level — wend seamlessly around and over rivers, streams and ponds, offering panoramic mountain views at every turn.

Which course is better? The argument has raged since Kananaskis’s opening in 1983. Mount Kidd is slightly more player-friendly and usually comes out on top in the rankings. But Mount Lorette features more water and boasts the property’s most admired hole, the 17th, a par-3 demanding a tee shot across the shimmering Kananaskis River to a green framed by magnificent peaks.

Stewart Creek Golf and Country Club Canmore, Alberta

Constructed atop a spider web of abandoned coal mine shafts near Canmore, Stewart Creek Golf and Country Club treats golfers to a roller coaster thrill ride right from their opening drive off a wildly elevated tee box to the fairway more than 100 feet below.

The Three Sisters, a spectacular three-peak massif in the Rundle Range, provides a postcard-perfect backdrop to a layout by Calgary-based architect Gary Browning. It was considered a model of low-impact design when it opened in 2000. Wildlife-movement corridors were incorporated into this wonderfully natural course, as were native grasses to provide forage for animals migrating through the Bow Valley corridor.

Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course Jasper, Alberta

Built as a twin attraction to Jasper Park Lodge, a rustic retreat set in the wilds just outside the town of Jasper, Stanley Thompson’s Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course startled the golf world with the brilliance of its design when it opened in 1926.

One masterful hole flows into the next, none more unforgettable than the 9th. Dubbed Cleopatra, the 231-yard par-3 plays downhill to a steep-sided and heavily bunkered green framed by the backdrop of distant Pyramid Mountain. Thompson, a mischievous man with an earthy sense of humour, playfully moulded his greenside bunkers into the voluptuous form of the ancient Egyptian queen. Unamused by the gag, hotel officials ordered the architect to go back and mask Cleopatra’s charms.

Big Sky Golf and Country Club Pemberton, British Columbia

Sheer-faced and massive, like a looming granite god, 8,400-foot-tall Mount Currie dominates Big Sky Golf and Country Club, though the superb links-style course in its shadow is surprisingly flat.

Built on a former potato farm by American architect Bob Cupp, Big Sky offers holes defined by fast-rushing creeks, the Green River and seven lakes as it wends through lovely Pemberton Valley, north of Whistler. Beware the fourth hole, not coincidentally named Purgatory, a 600-yard par-5 where water snakes across the fairway no fewer than four times.

Chateau Whistler Golf Club Whistler, British Columbia

As his legendary father, Robert Trent Jones, did at Kananaskis, Robert Trent Jones Jr. left his own sizeable imprint on Canada’s mountain game with the launch of Chateau Whistler Golf Club in 1993. An unforgiving test of shot-making, Chateau Whistler pitches and rolls with the natural contours of the land through rocky canyons and stands of Douglas fir at the base of Blackcomb Mountain. During the opening three holes alone, golfers experience an elevation change of more than 300 feet. Typically fearsome is the signature 8th hole, a 212-yard par-3 that plays severely downhill to a green guarded in front by a pond, and to the rear by a massive wall of granite notorious for bouncing errant balls into orbit.

Greywolf Golf Course Panorama Mountain Village, British Columbia

Doug Carrick’s first crack at a mountain design instantly became one of Canada’s must-play courses when it opened in 1999. Gorgeous and drama-filled, Greywolf Golf Course offers forest-edged fairways, views of the Purcell Mountain Range from every hole and a whopping 500 feet of elevation change. But it’s the par-3 signature 6th hole (shown here) that leaves golfers gasping. The aptly named Cliffhanger demands a long gut-churning carry over the sheer drop of Hopeful Canyon to a green perched along the edges of vertical rock cliffs. Rugged peaks tower in every direction, evergreens strain toward the sky, and from the green golfers can admire a view down a pristine mountain valley that alone is worth the trip west.

Salmon Arm Golf Club Salmon Arm, British Columbia

Carved through the boreal forest, each invisible from the next, the fairways at Salmon Arm Golf Club offer an almost eerie sense of isolation as they roll through rough-and-tumble terrain at the base of soaring Mount Ida. This tight and constantly demanding layout by Canmore-based architect Les Furber offers jaw-dropping views of the Shuswap Mountains with every shot before ending — as all superior courses must — with a bang. The 18th is a thrilling 504-yard par-5, reachable in two for those with the steady nerves to carry their approach shot over a menacing pond to a heavily bunkered green.

The Ridge at Predator Ridge Resort Vernon, British Columbia

Following a deceptively gentle start at the edge of a wheatgrass meadow, Doug Carrick’s The Ridge rapidly climbs into the foothills of the Monashee Range, offering stirring cliff-top tee shots and panoramic views of Lake Okanagan far below. Opened in 2010, The Ridge artfully blends eight completely rebuilt holes of Predator Ridge’s old Peregrine Course with 10 new holes. Though visually intimidating, Carrick’s mountain fairways feature dramatic mounds and slopes to help funnel wayward shots back into play. But especially striking are the dozens of large rock formations that have been power-washed to make their colours and striations more vivid — a robust and uniquely Canadian design technique being copied around the world.

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